The Urban Permaculture Farm Magazine
For 
Designing a Water Wise Landscape
When it comes to watering your lawn and paying water bills, sound gardening practices can cut down homeowner investments of effort, time and money, reports the American Association of Nurserymen. And, you don't have to turn your lovely colorful landscape into a rock garden featuring a sprinkling of cactus plants.
The keys to "naturescaping" involve how, when, and what you water in taking care of your property. Low-volume irrigation systems such as drip-watering devices reduce water use by 50 percent. Early-morning watering cuts down on evaporation.
Green Garden Art – Save Your Old Shovels and Rakes From The Landfill
When cleaning out my garage I found dozens of old tools I never used any more. Solution? Reuse them as garden art.
Using Freecycle, I found free mirrors in my local community from people who wanted to get rid of them without cluttering the landfill. Then, with my newly created garden art, I mixed it up on the back wall of my garden.
Voila!
Reduce, Precycle, Refuse, Reuse, Compost and Recycle
As consumers we all have extraordinary opportunities to make a change for the better through our purchasing power. Every purchase we make counts as a vote in support of the manufacturers, marketing and policy setters established practices and future actions of each product we purchase. Let your wallet do the talking. This is incredible nonviolent power speaks loudly to companies that will adjust their business practices to gain an edge over their competition and increase their market share. If the ultimate goal is to be greener than we are and to lighten our carbon footprints we need to start looking at the objects in our hands, our cupboards and consider their true impact and cost on our planet.
How to Winter Sow Seeds
First, let me give you a little background as to why I sowed the seeds during the Winter. I live in a very small house, a cottage actually, and I simply do not have room for a light set up, also, any window space I have must be fought from the cat and "Prinny" likes to look out on the street and watch the world go by, so I have to give her a windowsill. She's a good cat and deserves her place in the sun.
I got hooked on seed trading, and as you all know seed trading is like Pokemon card tradeing for foodies......"you gotta have 'em all." I had tons of seeds, I had them all. Though I am not a novice at gardening, I am a novice at growing seeds.
Lasagna Gardening
About twenty years ago, while living in New York’s Catskill Mountains, I wanted to make a garden. Armed with my shovel I began to try and dig the soil. The shovel jumped back at me so I went back to the woodshed for a pic-axe and began again. This time the pic jumped back and almost took me down. It seemed the garden plans would have to wait.
During a walk through the woods I tripped over a root and sat down hard. While I was getting my breath I noticed the wonderful aroma, un-mistakenly humus. I brushed aside the
Composting Junk Mail
My home office shredder gets used a lot! I shred everything and derive great pleasure from doing so. If you think that sounds a little odd, just know that my kids argue over who gets to shred the next stack.
The point is so much that makes its way into our homes in the form of paper is fair game for the shredder. As long as there is junk mail, schoolwork, bills or anything else printed, there will always be and endless source of compostable material from inside the house. And while we're having some good clean family fun reducing unwanted paper to confetti, I am creating a wonderful carbon-rich addition for the compost pile and ultimately the best soil amendment in the world!
Reduce Reuse Recycle Video
Business Gets a Green Kick!
Two years ago, TerraCycle, a company that sells worm poop fertilizer in a recycled soda bottle, deservedly earned the "Sparkly Green Tiara Award" bestowed by The Dirt DIVA Royal Horticultural Society. Worm Poop! Yup, you read that right. Worm poop in a bottle. Now that's American ingenuity. This year, Tom Szaky, CEO of the company has written a book entitled Revolution in a Bottle, (Penguin Group) which outlines the tumultuous path his company has endured to redefine green business.
Opening with a chapter titled Up to My Neck, the author recounts his days in a Princeton University dorm room where he and his friend Jon Beyer witnessed a classmate feeding food scraps to a box of worms. The worms were fed in exchange for their castings, which are loaded with abundant nutrients to support plant health and growth.
Rain Barrels
The song may go... April showers bring May flowers, but what do you do to water your garden come June when showers are sparse? Sure you can rely on your municipal water supply, but those of us that want to go green and conserve think self-sufficiency. Rain barrels are a great way to do just that. You can collect water and store it for when you need it, and it doesn't take much to replenish your supplies.
Unfortunately, if you are like me and my garden buddies, rain barrels are in the plans for our gardens, but way down the already crowded to-do list. I for one have already found the perfect place for four rain barrels in my yard. Three will be linked together in my garden and the fourth will be over by my blueberry bushes. I can easily handle the three in my garden because that one downspout collects water from approximately 700 SF of roof area.
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An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.
Sustainability, in a broad sense, is the capacity to endure. In ecology, the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. For humans it is the potential for long-term maintenance of wellbeing, which in turn depends on the wellbeing of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources.